Movies: Talking about Cosby, catching up with the Ricardos, and spinning off another Ice Age romp

The new titles in theatres are few this week. Notice my top three are all on streaming services. One, Being the Ricardos, has been up there for a month and is now getting a big awards push. I just got a chance to watch it and have included it along with a Gordon Lightfoot bio finally available and two others now streaming.

Here's the list ...

We Need to Talk About Cosby: 4

Being the Ricardos: 3

Ice Age — Adventures of Buck Wild: 2½

Gordon Lightfoot — If You Could Read my Mind: 3½

Clerk: 3½

One Shot: 2½

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COSBY: How do we deal with a shocking revelation about an entertainer we used to revere? In your mind, can you separate that person and his art? Eternal questions like those are raised again in this four-part series about Bill Cosby. The questions are personal to the man who made it, W. Kamau Bell, who grew up watching the Cosby Show and Fat Albert and so idolized the star that he was inspired to become a stand-up comedian himself. “America's dad” to some, Cosby was exposed as a “rapist” by another Black comedian in a clip that went viral. Some 60 women accused him, and he was convicted in the case of one (Andrea Constand, who now lives in Toronto), spent two years in jail but was released when the conviction was overturned on a technicality. Without even seeing it, he called this series “a PR hack job.”

Actually much of these four hours shows why he was so adored. He was funny, non-threatening and for young Blacks, a role model. From his first TV appearance on the Jack Paar Show, to his many comedy albums, to the TV series I Spy, Fat Albert and The Cosby Show he opened a way for Black performers into the mainstream. But intertwined with those clips and interview memories there are rumours, then accusations, that he was also a sexual predator. Several women appear sharing detailed accounts of being given drinks, getting woozy, waking up in the morning wondering what happened. In retrospect, some old bits take on a new meaning, like the “Spanish fly” jokes on a record or the special “barbecue sauce” in his TV show. It's clear that it had been going on for a long time and the series says people around him must have known. Why the silence? Why were the few victims who dared speak up early not listened to? Why the technicality? The series moves at too snappy a pace to ask. (Episodes premiere Sunday evenings on CRAVE.) 4 out of 5

BEING THE RICARDOS: Aaron Sorkin is a whiz with political content. The West Wing is still celebrated and I loved his last movie, The Trial of the Chicago 7. He's not as adept with personal stories as he shows here trying to connect to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. He brings them alive, and also their co-stars Vivian Vance and William Frawley and the writers and executives around their masterpiece of a TV sitcom, I Love Lucy. But it's like a documentary (deliberately so in structure) and not very close to them. You get the facts (not all correct) and some of the methods in creating a TV show, but not a lot of feeling.

Sorkin has squeezed too much in and there's not enough time spent on any part of the story. The film shows one five-day stretch in 1952. There's the writing, rewriting, rehearsing of one episode of the show but also a Red Scare after Lucy is accused of being a Communist. The network and the advertisers are grumbling, Lucy announces she's pregnant, Desi wants that included in the show and argues with network executives who are afraid it will distract people to think about where babies come from. Meanwhile, Lucy has career flashbacks and fears that Desi is being unfaithful. Just two hours for all that. No wonder not much is properly filled out. Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem manage to capture some of Lucy and Desi's ambience and occasionally even look like them. Lucy's role in shaping parts of the show is highlighted. That's worthwhile. And Bardem sings. There are good points. It's just that they're scattered. (Amazon Prime Video.) 3 out of 4

THE ICE AGE — ADVENTURES OF BUCK WILD: Here's the sixth film in the popular series but there are changes. The main characters and voices aren't around. Simon Pegg is, as the weasel Buck Wild who he played in the third film, and so are the two scrappy possums, Crash and Eddie, now voiced by Vincent Tong and Aaron Harris. When the pair get fed up being treated like babies they wander off looking for “the lost world.” They find an underground chamber where a dinosaur named Orson, claiming “colossal intellect,” is trying to rule because “dinos rule, mammals drool.” There's a lot of goofy humour like that.

Orson's got an army of raptors and at one point has to chastize them: “Didn't you get the memo? I'm your king.” Buck Wild has to rescue the possums. There are tense scenes as they hide from the raptors sniffing around, a scary boat ride to a lost lagoon and an encounter with a mama T. rex. And Buck and Orson battling with opposing philosophies: “harmony” versus “survival of the fittest.” Big ideas or not, it's a secondary entry in the animation pantheon. Fun but light. Disney shut down the studio that made the earlier ones and contracted the art work out to Bardel Entertainment in Vancouver. I've seen gripes online about the look of the trailer. The film itself looked pretty good to me on my computer screen. (Disney+) 2½ out of 5

GORDON LIGHTFOOT — IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND: He’s one of our greatest songwriters and a beloved performer, but he’s not known for revealing much about himself when he talks. He lets out more than usual in this film, probably because he knows and trusts the directors. Joan Tosoni and Martha Kehoe have a long background in music and TV documentaries here in Canada and have worked with him before. This bio is thorough, respectful and surprisingly frank and candid. Like when Lightfoot admits his regrets about how he treated people at times. “I caused emotional trauma,” he says.

Before that, the film is a straight appreciation of his art, with lots of performance clips, excerpts from some 26 songs and laudatory comments from many: Sylvia, Ian, Randy Bachman (“unique sound”), Alec Baldwin (“so clean”), Geddy Lee, Steve Earle, Anne Murray, and on and on. It’s a celebration and some of the early clips — the barbershop quartet he was in or him on Country Hoedown — are priceless. Then we hear of a drinking problem he had, drunken rages, leaving his wife and kids and how all that found its way into his songs. It’s a well-rounded portrait. It played at festivals three years ago and now has a VOD and digital release. 3½ out of 5

CLERK: I bet they would love this film over at the Rio Theatre where Kevin Smith has been to speak many times. Once for a 3-hour Q&A. It was probably a hoot and memorable. He's an entertainer when he talks, flinging quips and jokes about plus acute observations on modern culture, movies, games, and what have you. This film shows what led up to that and starts with a grainy VHS video where Smith, a New Jersey boy, tells his parents he's going off to film school in Vancouver. I don't know if he graduated but the next scene has him back in his hometown turning what he experienced working at a convenience store into a film called Clerks.

That played at Sundance and got him a cult audience. Jason Reitman still has his ticket and says it inspired him to make films, too (like his dad). Smith had created it with three friends who he hung out with at the local rec centre, and it was that crowd it spoke to. A followup flopped; others followed, some good, some so-so, and somewhere along that way, he helped Ben Affleck and Matt Damon by executive producing Good Will Hunting. He also found he was a natural storyteller in post-screening Q&As and started a whole second career strand by going on speaking tours. “I wound up being myself for a living,” he says. A lot of weed and a heart attack came too, but also praise from Stan Lee, Richard Linklater and others, and a loyal fan base. It's a zippy, lively documentary featuring many of the people he worked with and a putdown of one, Harvey Weinstein. Smith is sending any profits from movies he made for him to Women in Film. (This one is at VOD platforms like Cineplex not at the Rio.) 3½ out of 5

ONE SHOT: This one is a guilty pleasure. It's short and dumb but exciting and full of non-stop action. There's more gunplay here than I've seen in a long time. Maybe ever. And a bigger body count than is even possible. All anchored by some suspect political content. “Americans kill indiscriminately,” one character says. Filmmakers do too, sometimes.

A small squad of Navy Seals led by a lieutenant (Scott Adkins, familiar from John Wick movies) flies into a black-ops prison camp with a CIA woman (Ashley Greene Khoury, familiar from the Twilight movies) to pick up a prisoner to take to Washington. There's a “time-sensitive matter” (ludicrous when it's eventually revealed) and resistance from the camp commander (Ryan Phillippe). Then a group of mercenaries crash a truck through the gate and try to apprehend the same prisoner. And the battle is on.

They keep coming; more than one truck can possibly carry. Dozens get shot down. Some of our guys, too. But the shooting keeps on. These battle scenes are grainy and realistic. They're filmed in one take, the only justification for the film's title. I don't remember that we ever learned the truth about the prisoner, but so what? (iTunes, Cineplex and other platforms.) 2½ out of 5